Your edition of I[nternationale] S[ituationniste] is truly magnificent. I think that you have chosen the supplementary documents very well and will thus quite usefully complete the recent "American interpretation," which is so restrictive.[1] This interpretation unbalances the unity of the situationists' revolutionary point of view in both social critique and culture, to the benefit of culture. And, even in culture, this interpretation is still too backward, because it privileges the forms of modern art[2] that have already been recently known and admiringly received in the United States.
Today I send you a text from 1963 that corresponds very clearly with this aspect of the question: I fear that I did not think to make it known to you when we met, so fortunately, in 1992. Its title is "The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Politics and Art."[3] This past Monday, I sent you a copy of the quite comprehensive book by the German historian Anselm Jappe (who writes in Italian).
Alice [Becker-Ho] is very happy that you will be her translator in Japan.
It is not desirable to call me "Monsieur Debord." The most ceremonious formula that I have ever used in speaking with my contemporaries is "comrade." You can simply call me "Guy."
Quite cordially, and signing my Chinese seal,[1] Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by Greil Marcus.
[2] Translator's note: rock 'n' roll music, in particular, punk.
[3] See Guy Debord, Oeuvres (Gallimard Quarto Collection), pp. 647-653.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)